Dallas Stars Blog

Morrow misses practice with groin injury

He hurt it in warm-ups for Friday’s game at Anaheim, but played through the pain and logged 19:21 in ice time.

He took Saturday and Sunday off and still was held off the ice for Monday’s almost two-hour practice. He was at the building getting treatment and said he feels much better, but that he won’t know if he can play Tuesday against Anaheim until after he skates in the morning.

“I’ll see how I feel tomorrow, but I feel pretty good right now,” Morrow said.

Stars coach Marc Crawford said: “He’s gotten treatment the last three days and has gotten progressively better. The plan is for him to skate in the morning and for us to see how he is and where he is at.”

Krys Brach took Morrow’s place on the Mike Ribeiro line in practice, as Crawford stuck with the juggled lines he used on Friday:

Kari Lehtonen will start on Tuesday, and Crawford said he will read and react on using Lehtonen.

Crawford said he has been happy with Lehtonen’s play.

“He’s feeling really good about himself,” Crawford said. “We get really busy around Thanksgiving week, so I could foresee us to go strong with him.”

Lehtonen’s stats are not great. He is 7-6-0 and ranks 29th in goals against average at 2.99 and 25th in save percentage at .907. However, he has been the Stars’ best player on a lot of nights because he keeps them in games when they aren’t playing their best.

When asked if he has been surprised by how few “bad” or “soft” goals Lehtonen has allowed, Crawford responded: “He’s been really good in that area. In that part of the game, he’s been just exceptional, he really has.”